The Wellbeing Power Hour

Improving wellbeing at work with a morning routine

Last week I took three days off to do something on my bucket list: a yoga retreat.

Spending time in beautiful Somerset with a group of women I’d never met before (and most of whom were also there alone) was mind-expanding, but perhaps most enriching was the time I spent alone with myself. One woman there (hello, Kirsty) introduced me to a great structure for how to use some time alone, which I wanted to share here because I’m certain it has a lot to contribute to wellbeing at work.

I’d heard before about methods like Morning Pages: a type of stream-of-consciousness journaling set out in this book by Julia Cameron. And having spent three days sitting quietly in a yurt with my fellow yogis, I definitely knew that I enjoyed meditation.

So when Kirsty told me about Morning Miracles – which combines journaling, meditation, exercise, affirmations, reading and visioning in a series of quick 10-minute bursts – I knew I’d be giving it a go. I am a big fan of the power hour in any guise!

What’s great about this method is that you can move through the different parts of a morning ritual (which can be done at any time of the day, but morning feels most effective for me) and spend longer on say, journaling one day, and then the next day spend a few extra minutes on meditation. The process sets you up for the day feeling calm, positive, organised and focused on what you want to achieve. Not just that day, but over the longer term too.

Wellbeing power hours – visualisation techniques and the power of affirmation

The affirmations and the visualisation might sound a bit wacky, but coming up with some statements about how you want your life to be and then spending a moment to bring that to life is powerful stuff.

As Oprah, who is a big fan of visualisation says, “If you can see it and believe it, it is a lot easier to achieve it.” Jim Carey famously used to park on Mulholland Drive every single night before he was famous. The actor wrote himself a cheque for $10m which he kept in his wallet. He post-dated it for 1994, which was the year he was paid the exact same amount for his role in Dumb and Dumber.

The Morning Miracles routine – or variations of it – has enormous power to reduce stress, increase motivation and give you a framework to define what you want out of life. As this Huffington Post article outlines, believing you have already achieved something can alter the mind in significant ways. One study in the US with a group of jobseekers found that visualisation made them more successful in their job search.

I’m sure there are lots of people in my network already using these techniques: I’d love to hear about your own versions of Morning Miracles. Please share your tips with me over on Twitter.